What determines annhialation. And, how do you spell it?

[r_stich]

using v1.2...
So, I have a very good general seiging a Greek city. They attack me with a large force, and near the end of the battle I am left with my general's heavy cav, versus two half-depleted phalanxes. Rather than risk killing my best general, I decide to retreat, so I can come back with more troops next turn.

Only after I retreat my general (and the rest of the army) has completely disappeared. I had plenty of room to retreat to, so I don't understand. Probably there is a description of the conditions for surviving a retreat somewhere here, but I didnt' find it. Can someone point it out?

Thanks

[Khorak]

It would be ANNIHILATION. :)

[Ar7]

If you retreat then the AI calculates how good was the battle situation for you. If the AI comes to a decision that you would have probably lost the battle, then you loose a large piece of your army ( or the entire army, not sure ) It is supposed to simulate that the enemy will cut down your army during the retreat.

I am not 100% sure about it, so correct me if I am wrong.

[NightStar]

I think also if the enemy army can't escape your zone of control, it will be annihilated, the zone of control being the reddish colour on the strategic map when you encounter other armies. I cornered a Briton army in the woods and it had no way to escape, and up came the red skull in the pre battlescreen.

[BobTheTerrible]

If I remember correctly, if an army is brought down to 1/4 it's starting strength in one battle, it disbands. For example, if a 750 or more men in a 1,000 army are killed in one battle, the army would disband. I may be wrong though.

[Oaty]

ANNIHILATION (definition) A.I. controlled army

[afrit]

The patch readme says that a defeated army (which is not cornered and does not have the skull&bones icon on the battle dialog) will reform itself IF THERE ARE ENOUGH MEN LEFT ALIVE.

In my recent campaign I had a whole army (1000 + men) destroyed after it was defeated, although I managed to retreat an 80 men unit virtually intact.

In another battle that I WON, I lost a family member after his unit was down to one man, himself (he was not the general, but had a silver star). I never got the heroic death announcement nor an in-battle announcement. He just simply vanished.

So my best guess is that if you lose most of your army, or a certain unit loses most of its men, it gets disbanded. This is to avoid the MTW occurrence of remnant armies of 3 soldiers holding down a fort.

The question is how many losses can you sustain before disbanding? An earlier poster said 75%. I suspect is is higher (90% maybe) . Anyone knows for certain?

[screwtype]

In my recent campaign I had a whole army (1000 + men) destroyed after it was defeated

What, post patch? Oh dear, that really sucks.

It's the case of the disappearing armies that caused me to stop playing 1.1.

I have noticed though in 1.2 that instead of armies just disappearing, you now get a notice that says "the survivors of your army have disbanded" or some such. You also get a graphic of your army falling over and dying with a rather amusing grunt. So at least now you know an army was *meant* to be annihilated, and it wasn't just a bug.

<i>"So my best guess is that if you lose most of your army, or a certain unit loses most of its men, it gets disbanded. This is to avoid the MTW occurrence of remnant armies of 3 soldiers holding down a fort."</i>

I used to LIKE the feature of just a handful of guys surviving after a battle in the earlier games. But I can see there are practical reasons why they might not want that happening in RTW, because of the different handling of provinces and movement. You could end up having lots of tedious little battles just to polish off that handful of guys who escape every time.

But I certainly don't think 1000 man armies should be disappearing, if they are then they need to work on the algorithm.

<i>"The question is how many losses can you sustain before disbanding? An earlier poster said 75%. I suspect ii is higher (90% maybe) . Anyone knows for certain?"</i>

I'd like to know that too.